Highlights

Nirmal Yogi allegedly killed self after performing poorly in tests

He was prepping for admission to IITs for the past two years

6 student suicides reported from coaching hub Kota this year

A 17-year-old student prepping for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology or IITs allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from a fan at his rented room in Kota in Rajasthan on Monday night, the police have said.

Nirmal Yogi, a Class XII student and a resident of Sawai Madhopur district, is the sixth student to have died in the coaching hub this year. He was prepping for admission to the premier engineering institute for the past two years.

No suicide note was found in his room. But his family says he was "depressed" after performing poorly in tests conducted twice a month to review students' progress.

"He was depressed. Every 15 days there is a test. He didn't get good marks so he was tense," said Nirmal's uncle.

Nirmal's body has been sent to hospital for postmortem, the police said, adding that an investigation has been ordered in the case.

The small desert town of Kota, nearly 250 km from Jaipur, accommodates a range of coaching institutes to prep students for the IIT and medical entrance exams.

Nearly 11 lakh students sit for the IIT entrance every year. Of these, two lakh qualify the mains and only 10,000 are eventually accepted by the IITs.

After another student ended her life despite having cracked the IIT-JEE mains last month, a senior administration official, Collector Ravi Kumar Surpur, had sent a letter to the parents of the 1.5 lakh students enrolled for coaching in Kota, urging them "not to force their expectations and dreams on their children".

Seventeen students taking coaching committed suicide in Kota last year, after which guidelines to coaching institutes to check such deaths were initiated.